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Red mud: An environmental challenge but overlooked treasure for critical rare earth metals

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Abstract

Rare earth metals (REMs) are a critical component not only for consumer electronics, but also for a wide range of strategic applications such as clean energy, electric vehicles, aerospace, automotive, and defense. The REMs are also progressively being integrated into various newer and advanced technologies that drive the demand and accelerate stress over primary resources. Despite ever-increasing demand and strategic importance, the REM supply chain is purely dependent on primary resources, whereas secondary resources such as “red mud” (RM), which has significant REM content, had rarely been exploited. RM is an industrial waste generated during alumina production by the Bayer process. Limitation and challenges of REM exploitation from RM mainly contributed by absences of efficient technology, lack of diversified research and precise data, and clear assessment of REM quantity and value remain unlocked in RM. Hence, the current investigation address issues such as the precise assessment of data, comprehensive estimation REM remains unexploited in RM through quantitative evaluation REMs in the globally stockpiled/generated RM and estimated future RM generation. The current investigation of RM as a secondary resource for REM oxide estimated, globally 253,228, 275,737, 290,545, 313,943, 328,752, 352,445, 358,369, 382,063, 387,986, and 385,024 tons of REM oxide in RM were either stockpiled or scrapped during the years 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. Global REM oxide mine production during the same period were 130,000, 130,000, 110,000, 110,000, 123,000, 124,000, 129,000, 130,000, 190,000, and 210,000 tons, respectively. The global alumina industry and RM data indicated, respectively, during 1970–1979, 1980–1989, 1990–1999, 2010–2019 decades 847, 994, 1289, 2147, 3323 thousand tons of REM oxide in RM were scrapped/stockpiled. From the estimated alumina demand for the next three decades, REM oxide in RM to be scrapped/stockpiled could reach 1987, 2109, 2239, 2376, 2522, and 2677 thousand tons cumulatively in each five-year interval for the years 2021–2025, 2026–2030, 2031–2035, 2036–2040, 2041–2045, and 2046–2050, respectively. The ratio of projected REM oxide to be scrapped in RM versus demand for the next five years, i.e., 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 years, respectively could be 2.62, 1.55, 1.48, 1.42, and 1.35, indicated in an efficient REM recovery from RM scenario, the supply chain bottleneck can be converted to supply chain abundant.

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Data cited in the manuscript are from open source and appropriately credited.

Abbreviations

RM:

Red mud (An industrial waste generated during alumina production).

REM(s):

Rare earth metal(s)

RE2O3 :

Rare earth metal oxides

REM:

Sc, Y, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, and Lu

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Funding

Research reported above is not funded research, rather for academic interest research only.

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  1. Materials Science and Chemical Engineering Center, Institute for Advanced Engineering, Yongin, Republic of Korea

    Basudev Swain

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  1. Basudev Swain
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Correspondence to Basudev Swain.

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Swain, B. Red mud: An environmental challenge but overlooked treasure for critical rare earth metals. MRS Bulletin 47, 289–302 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43577-022-00300-x

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